Golden Age

Golden Age is a browser-based strategy MMORPG by Aeria games. Choose from one of three factions and stake out your own corner of the vast landscape of the game. Build multiple cities, conquer parts of the land to increase resource production, appoint heroes at the heads of your armies, and perhaps even conquer the world! The choice is yours.

Golden Age Overview

Golden Age is a browser MMORPG with multiple modes of progression. Not only do you level up your cities, but you also level up your “sire,” which serves as your own personal avatar in the game. You can also hire heroes, which can be appointed to various tasks such as defensive garrisons, conquering armies, or administrative tasks for your cities, depending on their specializations. Every hero and your sire can be outfitted with gear that enhances performance, and the opportunities for growth are many.

There are three factions to choose from in Golden Age, each with unique units, special buildings, avatars, and castles.

Knights Templar: This faction is the most militant of the three factions. Their special building is the arena, which increases the number of troops you can recruit each week, giving you a noticable advantage in military endeavours. Your units in general will have more attack power, but consume more population to produce. Your mages and infantry will also have slightly higher attacking power – this is a faction for the offensive-minded player!

Ibero Alliance: This faction is more focused on science and defense. Their traps and wall enhancements are fantastic, and they are allowed access to unique defensive tech for their walls, making their cities difficult to breach. It’s also unwise to underestimate their offensive capacity, as their cavalry are strong and swift.

Rhine Commerce Guild: This is a merchant faction mostly focused on resource production, able to eclipse other factions in terms of sheer productivity with the help of their special guild buildings. They can also trade with other players more efficiently. Though they aren’t as good at fighting as the other factions, they can upgrade and train very quickly thanks to their high production rates.

Golden Age Screenshots

Golden Age Featured Video

Full Review

Golden Age Full Review

By B. Olivia

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be quite a few of these browser-based strategy MMOs popping up lately. Golden Age follows this trend by, well, popping up. I’ve played more than a few of these games in the past, and I generally like them, being a fan of strategizing in general, but Golden Age seems to take the genre to previously unseen heights. It’s a game full of customization and freedom, with a hell of a lot more to do than most of the games from this genre I’ve played. It’s by no means perfect, but compared to its competition, it definitely approaches the ceiling of quality. It’s a game you could easily lose hours of your life to, and best of all, it’s easy to pick up and play, in bite-sized chunks, making it the perfect way to distract yourself at work or school. Hooray!

Faction Matters

In a lot of these games, your faction choice doesn’t have too much bearing on your gameplay, but in Golden Age, the difference is massive. Each faction has a distinctly specialized role to play in the game world, and each one has plenty of unique differences that makes one feel distinct in their choice. It helps the player have a sense of factional pride, because not only is your gameplay augmented and specialized, but your appearance, special units, and even capital city (we’ll get into that next) are different depending on which faction you choose.

I chose to be a part of the Knights Templar, because I like wearing armor and beating people up in the name of righteousness. I was pleased to discover that this was, indeed, the correct choice! My special units were often pretty girls with red crosses on their tabards, or maybe wings strapped to their backs. Sweet. Having a big aesthetic difference between factions is important to me. Obviously.

Of course, you can pretty much carve out your very own little kingdom by founding cities and expanding on the map, being a faction unto yourself. This goes even further when you join an alliance with other players. Suddenly, the players themselves are defining the factions, and even battling eachother over resource points and prime real estate. How cool is that?

Expand, Expand, Expand!

One thing I really loved about Golden Age was the fact that you could not only build more than one city, but that every day new things popped up on the map for me to attack with my armies and use to enhance my resource production or gather unique treasures. There’s a lot more to this game than simply building up a city and getting lots of resources. Leveling up your sire (your personal avatar) and your heroes, as well as outfitting them, take splenty of time and effort. Best of all? You really don’t have to spend a dime of real-life cash to make a lot of progress. In fact, using the game’s premium currency is really only useful when you want to rapidly expand or enhance a new city. It’s hardly necessary.

So much to do, so little time!

Unlike so many browser-based strategy games, Golden age is full of things to do while you wait for your buildings to construct themselves or your resources to recharge. The game has a great quest system, and navigating your capital city to find quests and get accquainted with the game is a breeze. There are even special “instances” you can go into, which are basically large maps your army (lead by the hero of your choice) can plod along, getting into battles until they reach the end. This is on top of your being able to form multiple armies and send them out to conquer wilderness, or just explore your capital city and trade/socialize with other players.

Battle: Can’t someone else do it?

Fitting of your role as a noble of the land, the actual battles your troops get into are largely outside your control. All you do is move armies around the map and tell them where to go, the actual outcome of the battle is determined by the stats of your troops, their makeup, and the gear/level of your hero and their stats/skills/specializations. Customizing all of those numbers is a full-time job, so if you’re a natural born min-maxer and gear-fiend, this game is going to be heaven for you. If you like a bit more of a hands-on approach to gameplay, like me, you might be a bit disappointed. However, this is to be expected of a game that operates at the scale of entire kingdoms, so it’s really only a matter of personal taste.

In the end, regardless of your skill as a player, every fight as going to come down to stone-cold numbers. So, manage your troops well, and don’t overextend! This is an empire building game, not an RTS. Keep that in mind and you’ll enjoy yourself. Or you’ll not enjoy yourself, because you’re the kind of person that can’t stand constantly swimming through menus and spreadsheets. But if that’s the case, you shouldn’t be playing this kind of game!

Final Verdict: Great

Of all the browser-based strategy MMORPGs I’ve played, Golden Age ranks right up there at the top. There’s plenty to do, not much waiting around, a thriving community, and lots of fun goals you can set for yourself within the game. The ability to found multiple cities and build at a generally faster rate than most strategy MMOs makes this game a real keeper, and one that can either be a perfect supplement to a full-time gaming habit, or even a complete focus in its own right. Best of all, if you get bored and want a break, you can apply for a vacation, and put your city in stasis! No major complaints here – another great title from Aeria.